Children's Safety and First Aid Open Class Lesson Plan

The core goal of this 90-minute open class for parents and early childhood education practitioners is to enable participants to quickly identify and correctly handle the three most common types of accidental injuries to children: choking, burns, and falls, avoid 80% of common first aid misunderstandings, and adapt to public presentation scenarios in communities, kindergartens, and parent-child institutions. After more than 200 presentations and verifications in 5 years, the accuracy rate of students' practical operations after class can reach more than 75%.

Don’t think you can’t learn anything in 90 minutes. When I first started giving this lecture, I wanted to include electric shocks, poisonings, and pet bites. But I later found out that it was useless. People would turn around and forget about it. Why not just focus on the three most common accidents? Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that these three types of accidents account for 82% of the total pre-hospital emergency care for children aged 1 to 6 years old. If you understand these three things, you can avoid most risks. It’s quite helpless to say that every time I go to the community to hold this class, most of the people who sign up are grandmas and grandmothers. Young parents rarely come because they either have to go to work or take their children to interest classes. In fact, the most important people to learn are young parents, after all, they usually spend the longest time with their children.

Every time I start, I don’t start with a general explanation. I first show three 1-minute local surveillance clips, which I found from the local police station and the community. They are not coded and are what happened around us: last spring in a community, a 3-year-old child climbed up a bay window with a bench. When the adult turned around to get the express, it fell over. On the second floor, he fell and suffered intracranial hemorrhage.； There was also a snack time in kindergarten. The child choked on some jelly. The teacher squatted next to him and patted his back for almost 10 minutes. When 120 came, his lips were purple. ； Another grandma was cooking, and her baby pulled a hot water bottle on the countertop and poured half a pot of boiling water on her back. The grandma applied half a tube of toothpaste on the spot. When she got to the hospital, the doctor cleaned the wound for almost an hour, and the baby cried heartbrokenly. Every time after playing these three sections, people in the audience who were chatting and playing with their mobile phones basically raised their heads.

Last time, a parent who practiced traditional Chinese medicine argued with me on the spot, saying that applying badger oil on burns and scalds was passed down from our ancestors. When he was a child, he had no scars after applying it. I didn’t argue with him, so I laid out two logics for treatment: In the past, everyone lived in the village, dozens of miles away from the health center, and there was no running cold water for the first time after getting burned. Applying badger oil and toothpaste can indeed isolate the air, temporarily relieve pain, and avoid external pollution. This idea was correct under the conditions at the time.； But now most of us live in the city, and the farthest distance from the hospital is only half an hour's drive. With running cold water readily available, the cooling effect of running cold water at 15-20°C for 15 minutes is better than applying anything else, and it will not cause trouble for the doctor to clean the wound. As for whether to leave scars, it depends on the depth of the burn, not what is applied. Later, when the class was over, the parent came to me specifically and told me that this was indeed the truth and that I had never turned around before.

After the theory, I will leave at least 20 minutes of practical time. Each time I will bring three simulators: a baby model under 1 year old, a toddler model of 3 years old, and a 6-year-old child model. Don’t be embarrassed to come and practice. I have seen too many people say that they can, but when they get started, they are either too weak or too weak. The hole was too big, or the position was wrong - last time a father who was 1.8 meters tall almost pushed the baby mannequin flying when he performed the Heimlich abdominal thrust. I quickly stopped him and said that with your strength, you didn't hit the foreign object out, and the baby's ribs were broken first. To perform the Heimlich on a baby under 1 year old, you only need the strength of two fingers, and a hollow palm to pat the back. Don't hit it hard. Oh, by the way, there is another premise that you need to remember clearly. Heimlich is only suitable for babies who are awake and choked and unable to speak. If the baby has lost consciousness, don’t do the shock, just do cardiopulmonary resuscitation and wait for 120 to come. Others asked, what if the baby gets stuck on his own when no one is around? I will teach them to stand on the back of a chair or on the armrest of the sofa to fight. A while ago, I even encountered a 5-year-old kid who got stuck in a peanut. He moved a small stool to fight on the back of the sofa and coughed up the foreign object. It was when his mother practiced at home after listening to the class. The child learned it by watching. Do you think it is magical or not?

Another common pitfall is that after a baby falls, he immediately picks him up and shakes him, asking, "Are you okay? Wake up." Last year, a baby in our district fell from a one-meter-high slide. The teacher was afraid that the parents would blame him, so he picked him up and shook him on the spot. As a result, it was just a slight bone fracture, which turned into a cervical vertebra dislocation, and he had to wear a neck brace for three months. If you really encounter a fall, squat down and watch for 10 seconds. If the baby can cry, talk, and move its arms and legs, then slowly pick it up. If the baby doesn't cry or fuss after the fall, or complains of neck pain or back pain, don't move. Call 120 directly and wait for professionals to come and move. There are also common pitfalls such as throwing your head up when you have a nosebleed, stuffing your head with a towel when you have a convulsion, and pouring vinegar into a fish bone. I will mention it every time. Don’t think that no one does this anymore. In the consultation I received last week, there was a mother who poured vinegar into her baby and burned her esophagus.

Oh, by the way, there is another point that I always say to avoid confusion after reading different information - for example, in the case of children being electrocuted, the American Heart Association's guidelines say that the power must be cut off before contacting the injured. Some grassroots training in China says that you can use dry wooden sticks or plastic sticks to pick apart wires. Both of these are actually correct, but the applicable scenarios are different: American residences basically have whole-house leakage protection.； In many of our old communities, the electric switch may be in the main switch box on the first floor and you can't find it at all, or you may have to wait for the management to come in if the power is cut off. The fastest way is to use dry non-conductive things to open the wires. You don't have to worry about which is the standard answer. The one that suits your situation at that time is right.

At the end of each class, I will not give you any dense handbook of knowledge points, nor will I ask you to memorize formulas. When you encounter a problem, your mind will go blank and you will not be able to remember what the formulas are. I only ask you to remember two sentences: first, don’t make blind decisions when you are not sure. Call 120 first. The dispatcher on the other end of the phone will teach you step by step. It is much more reliable than making random guesses on your own. ； Second, if the baby can cry, shout, and talk, there is basically no danger to his life. If he suddenly becomes silent, has a purple face, and can't breathe, that is a life-threatening situation, and he must take action immediately. Oh, yes, the last time a grandma came back for a week after attending a class, she used Heimlich to save her grandson from getting stuck with longan, and gave me a basket of free-range eggs. She said that it was 100 times more effective than taking classes that sell health care products. I still remember her smile with wrinkles on her face. This is probably the meaning of my preaching for so many years.